ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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Teletype S.A. was the owner company until 2019 of Mega Channel. It was established on 24 April 1989 with a share capital of EUR 5 million. The shareholders of the company each holding 20% were Christos Lambrakis, George Bobolas, Christos Tegopoulos, Aristides Alafousos and the Vardinoyannis family.

On 24 July 1989 in the government of Zannetakis he obtained the first and temporary permission to create a television station that began broadcasting after about four months, on 20 November while in 1993 he obtained a renewable license of seven years of power which has been retained legislatively through extensions taken by the media which the Council of State deemed illegal and unconstitutional.

It was the first Greek station to invest in subscription television, acquiring 40% of the Multichoice Hellas of the then-Nethold Group. The company entered the stock exchange in 1994 and continued changes were made to shareholders and their holding rates for a long time.

In 2016 banks decided to commit Teletype accounts to repay DOL loans, which faced financial problems, having 22.11% of the shares of the first resulting in conflicts and workers going on strike as they did not receive their payroll. Since September, Mega's employees have been on hold, while on 6 October a request was filed by a third company requesting Teletype to be declared bankrupt.

On 22 May 2017 businessman Ivan Savvidis via Cyprus company Dimera Media Investments Limited purchased from Pegasus Editorial S.A. 19.63% of 32.72% of the share capital held in Teletype giving roughly 12 million euros with the remaining 13.09% remaining on the ownership of the Bobola family and being pawned by banks. On 21 August, he sold the percentage to the cooperating Cypriot company Elenovo Limited.

Earlier, on 31 May 2017, Vangelis Marinakis via Alter Ego Media Company S.A. In parallel with the acquisition of the IOL assets, it acquired, among other things, 22.11% of Teletype's shares.

The last share composition of Teletypos included businessman Dimitris Kopeloutsos through Prime Applications S.A. Development, Management and Exploitation of Information and Internet Applications with 2.68%, the shipowner Victor Restis (who owns Nickelodeon Greece and RISE TV channels) via Cyprus Benbay Limited with 3.19% and other foreign and Greek small shareholders.

As of 31 January 2018 the station stopped advertising, while on 12 March the ESR met for seven hours approving or rejecting Teletype's request to convert Mega from general content to the thematic channel and which it decided to